


as if a kiss had sealed your mouth

by amaranthinecanicular



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Akaashi just loves Bokuto so much okay, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, shameless and gratuitous fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27883762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaranthinecanicular/pseuds/amaranthinecanicular
Summary: Most people assume that between them, Bokuto is the more affectionate. Akaashi does not dissuade them of this notion. It isn’t, strictly speaking, incorrect. But they don’t need to know how quiet Bokuto can be in the mornings, how still and pensive. They don’t need to see the feathery nest of his hair, mussed during the night. And they don’t need to see Akaashi, worshiping, as he does every morning after a long stint apart.He is content to tuck those secrets away for himself.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 15
Kudos: 134





	as if a kiss had sealed your mouth

Most people—old teammates, new teammates, friends and coworkers, the press once Akaashi consented to a public declaration—assume that between them, Bokuto is the more affectionate. Akaashi does not dissuade them of this notion. It isn’t, strictly speaking, incorrect. Akaashi is reserved; Bokuto wears his heart on his sleeve. Akaashi keeps his hands to himself; Bokuto is tactile, yearning and yearning for closeness. Once, after a particularly hardwon match, Bokuto launched into the stands to catch Akaashi up in a swooping, joyous kiss. The stunt dominated the sports news cycle for days.

Still. Teammates, friends, coworkers, and the press don't need to know everything. They don’t need to know how quiet Bokuto can be in the mornings, how still and pensive. They don’t need to see the feathery nest of his hair, mussed during the night. And they don’t need to see Akaashi, worshiping, as he does every morning after a long stint apart. He is content to tuck those secrets away for himself.

Bokuto is rosy and golden under the rising sun. 

The night of a reunion is always…eventful, if Akaashi were to be polite about it, but the mornings after are his favorite. His skin remembers, slowly and with glee, how it feels to wake up warmed by the body next to him. Bokuto’s face is mashed into the pillow; his arm is a deadweight slung over Akaashi’s hip. He is snoring, and drooling, and his hair is hopeless, crusted with old gel. He looks ridiculous. Akaashi missed him so much it ached.

If it were up to him, he would be in the stands for each of Bokuto’s games. He would drive along behind the team bus, sharing hotel rooms and bad take-out. But his job is as demanding as Bokuto’s, especially with the growing popularity of Udai-san’s manga, and it just isn’t feasible. So he attends when he can and sees Bokuto off when he can’t. He throws himself into his work. He makes do with phone calls and televised game coverage. He endures the slow fade of Bokuto’s scent from his pillow, and he ignores the faint feeling of being lost, like a planet thrown from orbit. There’s no need to dwell. Bokuto always returns, after all.

He presses his lips to the curve of Bokuto’s shoulder. “Bokuto-san.” He’d missed saying it while Bokuto was away. It’s a precious name. Dear. And it is safe in Akaashi’s mouth; Bokuto trusts him with it, and so he will protect it, will cushion it as it falls from his tongue.

“Bokuto-san.” He tucks it between each knob of his spine. “Bokuto-san.” 

Bokuto’s face is still buried in the pillow. His eyes are still closed. From the visible crescent moon of his face, the corner of a drowsy grin comes into view. Akaashi has to kiss that mouth. He has to taste that smile. A man would die without sunshine, and he is no exception.

“Morning,” Bokuto says. His voice is rough with sleep.

“Your breath is terrible,” says Akaashi.

 _“’Kaashiii._ So mean. So early!” The consonants of Akaashi’s name are slurred; the vowels unfurl with sleepy indignation. His low laughter rumbles through Akaashi’s bones.

“I am.” 

He pours himself over Bokuto’s back. The solid warmth of him, the sweat-sticky sweetness of his skin. Akaashi is molten and mellow. Bokuto breathes and Akaashi feels it: the swell of his ribcage, the rise of his shoulders, both broader than his own. He runs his nose along the nape of his neck, where the hair is dark and new and soft.

“You’ll forgive me,” he whispers, “Bokuto-san.”

Bokuto grumbles but does not disagree, and Akaashi recommits himself to his task, leaves blooming marks on Bokuto’s skin wherever he sees fit. “Bokuto-san.” He drips it as honey in the valleys and dips of Bokuto’s body. “Bokuto-san.” 

When Bokuto rolls over, Akaashi lets him. With so much more canvas to work with, he is intent on throwing himself back into his work, but he is stopped by two broad, calloused palms on his face.

He frowns. “Bokuto-san.”

“Akaashi.” Bokuto’s grin is lazy, and a little wicked. “C’mon, lemme look at you for a minute. I missed looking at you.”

He says nothing more, and Akaashi is forced to settle into the circle of his embrace. Bokuto’s regard is steady and unselfconscious; Akaashi feels the slow flood of heat in his cheeks. Bokuto feels it too, he must, because his smile turns giddy, and his thumbs start to skim over Akaashi’s cheekbones, over and over.

Akaashi breaks first. He scoffs and glances away. “Please stop trying to distract me, Bokuto-san. I have a very important task I’d like to finish.”

“Your funny welcome home ritual, you mean.”

“Whatever you’d like to call it.” 

Bokuto finally breaks his intense, ponderous stare to laugh. He hooks his thumbs behind Akaashi’s jaw and pulls him down to drop small, adoring kisses all over his mouth: the corners, the full bottom lip, the bow. “God,” he giggles, “you’re _so_ cute.”

Seized by sudden, annoyed, irrepressible fondness, Akaashi turns his face and blows a raspberry against Bokuto’s neck, and the giggling explodes into loud, hooting guffaws. 

“I thought I was mean, Bokuto-san.” He breathes it, and can feel the fine tremors running through Bokuto’s skin with every brush of his lips. Bokuto laughs harder. The hands on Akaashi’s face scrunch up into his hair, tugging in protest.

“You can be both, they’re not mutually exclusive,” he chokes out. Akaashi levers himself up for that, nose to nose.

“Mutually exclusive,” he repeats. Even while wiping tears from his eyes, Bokuto manages to preen. 

“Pretty impressive, right?” 

Akaashi gives it some thought.

“Mid-level difficulty,” he decides. “You can do better.”

_“Akaashi!”_

Akaashi ignores him. He resumes his previous endeavor with single-minded focus. 

“Bokuto-san.” He drops it like a pearl into the hollow of his throat. “Bokuto-san.” Down to his sternum. Down to his belly. His fingers trace Bokuto’s golden edges, the line of his torso to the taper of his waist, to the powerful swell of his thighs. “Bokuto-san.”

For long minutes Bokuto is silent and obedient, making no move to interrupt past smoothing a hand through Akaashi’s hair. It takes longer than Akaashi thought it would before he begins to squirm.

“You’re fidgeting, Bokuto-san.” 

“Are you done yet?” Restless; petulant and pouting. “C’mon, I wanna kiss you. I really wanna kiss you, ’Kaashi.”

Akaashi has to swallow his own dopey laughter. He rests his chin on Bokuto’s naval. “You’ve been very patient,” he concedes, because when it comes down to it he is weak for Bokuto. He always has been, ever since they were children, more in love with volleyball than each other, though they were well on their way. Even then he would give himself to Bokuto whenever he was asked: hours and hours in the gym, practicing. Hours and hours of his time and effort and attention. He’d known then what others can’t seem to grasp even now—that between the two of them, he is the lucky one, just to have the chance to orbit the brilliance of Bokuto’s star. 

How wonderful, he thinks, to be back in Bokuto’s orbit after the long nights apart. How wonderful to celebrate Bokuto’s return, and feel as though he’s the one coming home.

Akaashi glides up and smothers the stray bubbles of laughter against Bokuto’s mouth. He kisses him, and kisses him; he tastes the drawn out syllables of his own name. They taste like morning breath. They also taste like Bokuto, and that is more than worth it. 

Eventually oxygen becomes more vital than kissing Bokuto, though Akaashi puts it off for as long as he can. They take deep, slow breaths that fan across each other’s cheeks. They rest their foreheads together. Bokuto’s expression has gone soft and thoughtful.

“Missed you, Keiji,” he murmurs. His voice is thick. A lump rises to Akaashi’s throat. 

Bokuto really is such a hopeless, clingy, unbearably soppy thing. Akaashi sweeps back his bangs to kiss each of his eyelids, just to watch them flutter. Of course he’s no better. “I missed you too, Koutarou.”

Bokuto loops both arms around Akaashi’s middle to pull him down and bury his face in his neck, where he mumbles sappy, inarticulate nonsense. He’s holding Akaashi much too tight, but it allows him to nestle his face in his hair, so he decides to let it go. For a second time he considers the dark roots. The black is beginning to drown out the white. “You need a touch up.”

He can feel the shape of a smile against his collarbones. “Wanna help me dye it later?”

Akaashi strokes through his hair, once, twice. It’s an intensive process. He thinks of bleach and latex gloves and the chemical smell that will stay in his nose for hours. He thinks of Bokuto, with his head tilted back and his throat bared, and the relaxed line of his body. The curve of his mouth will be soft, and he may hum or chatter, but he will be quiet, and content. Akaashi knows; they’ve done this before. His eyes will be shut only gently. He won’t scrunch them or shy away, because he trusts Akaashi to shield him from any pain.

“We don’t have to,” Bokuto says, misinterpreting Akaashi’s silence. “I could do it myself, or I could go to a place--”

“I’ll do it.” He says it too quickly. He knows he said it too quickly because he can already feel Bokuto’s smile stretch into something sly, so he adds, “You’ll make a mess if you do it yourself.”

“Hey!”

Bokuto puffs wet, retaliatory breaths into Akaashi’s ear, just because he knows Akaashi is ticklish there. This time Akaashi can’t swallow his laughter fast enough; it slips out of him, soft and breathy as he tries to squirm away, but Bokuto presses his advantage. He rolls them over and pins Akaashi with his weight, wiggling his fingers into all of Akaashi's weakest places. His quiet and dignified laughter devolves into humiliating snorts, and then Bokuto is laughing too, and then Bokuto is kissing him, thoroughly and with focus, which, Akaashi supposes, is its own retaliation. 

They part without really parting. “’Kaashi,” Bokuto mutters, but Akaashi is not ready to open his eyes yet. He's breathless and dizzy, as though he can feel the world turning, with just the two of them at its center. He’s felt this way before, and as ever, he is helpless to it--it threatens to overflow between the slats of his ribs. He clutches Bokuto for dear life and drags his lips down his jaw and he whispers, _“Bokuto-san, Bokuto-san,”_ until the mad racing of his heart slows.

When he finally opens his eyes, it’s to see Bokuto’s face, bright red, his amber eyes round and shining. Akaashi knows he’s flushing with his whole body, but to avert his gaze now would be to make Bokuto’s teasing all the worse.

Bokuto does not tease him at all, as it turns out. Instead he makes a despairing noise in the back of his throat and hangs his head, forehead resting against Akaashi’s shoulder.

 _“Akaashiii._ Can I tell the guys you’re like this yet?”

The Jackals, he means. Akaashi wills his blush to recede. “Like what, Bokuto-san?” 

“Like—this!” Bokuto gestures broadly without lifting his head. “That you’re the cutest person to ever exist in the whole world!”

Akaashi thinks about it. As mortifying as the thought of having a witness to this morning is, Bokuto _telling_ someone is probably no different from the way he already talks about Akaashi. The Jackals have confessed to him more than once how Bokuto gushes and moons after him, so it’s something he’s learned to live with. He skates his fingers idly along Bokuto’s arm until he reaches his hand, and weaves their fingers together. 

“You can tell them whatever you like,” he says, and grins against the underside of Bokuto’s jaw. Hidden and safe. “They’ll never believe you, Bokuto-san.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Neruda's "I Like You When You Are Quiet."


End file.
